Technical Notes 2009

Abstract: The theoretical vacuum energy density estimated on the basis of the Standard Model of particle physics and very general quantum assumptions is 59 to 123 orders of magnitude larger than the measured vacuum energy density for the observable universe which is determined on the basis of the Standard Model of cosmology and empirical data. This enormous disparity between the expectations of two of our most widely accepted theoretical frameworks demands a credible and self-consistent explanation, and yet even after decades of sporadic effort a generally accepted resolution of this crisis has not surfaced. Very recently, however, a discrete self-similar cosmological paradigm based on the fundamental principle of discrete scale invariance has been found to offer a rationale for reducing the vacuum energy density disparity by at least 115 orders of magnitude, and possibly this new paradigm offers a means of eliminating the vacuum energy density crisis entirely.